Karnataka - Bangalore

Fire at a bar triggers panic

Staff Reporter

CARNAGE: A Fire and Emergency Service employee surveys the gutted portion of a commercial complex in Rest House Road in Bangalore on Thursday. — Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

BANGALORE: A fire broke out at a bar and restaurant on Rest House Road on Thursday causing panic among the shopkeepers on the adjoining Brigade Road.

The Fire and Emergency Service personnel checked the fire from spreading to neighbouring buildings. They rescued a 13-year-old boy trapped on the smoke-engulfed first floor of the restaurant, Brigade Fuel.

The boy, Darshan, an employee of the restaurant, was asleep on the first floor. As smoke engulfed the air-conditioned hall, the scared boy locked himself in a toilet. "While he had not sustained burns, he was in a state of shock," Regional Fire Officer (Bangalore Range-1) K.U. Ramesh, who supervised the rescue operation, said to The Hindu .

The fire broke out around noon and a neighbouring shopkeeper informed the Fire Control Room at 12.10 p.m. after noticing thick smoke billowing from the building.

The firemen initially found it difficult to enter the building because of the dense smoke on ground, first and second floors. After battling for an hour, they put out the fire with help of four fire tenders, Mr. Ramesh said.

Several gas cylinders were stored in the gas bank on the ground floor of the restaurant and gas was leaking from a cylinder. The fire was apparently triggered by an electric short circuit from a refrigerator that was near the gas bank, Mr. Ramesh said.

Furniture, air conditioners and other articles on the ground and first floor of the restaurant were gutted.

It is said that when someone set a heap of garbage on fire near the restaurant, the fibre sheet roof of the gas bank caught fire.

The Cubbon Park police have registered a case.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu